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// l'immensité
// Story: Quete
// by Comrade Bagel Muffin
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Escutcheon continued at his pace through the wooded grove. The morning sun filtering through the leaves causing his golden mane to shine. "Mother will probably ground me for not combing my mane." He laughed at the thought of mother trying to brush out all of the knots that had built up over the last couple of weeks. His laughter died as he thought of how painful it would be. If combing out tangles from just one night hurt then combing out the tangles from three weeks would probably kill him. He tried to grab one of the sticks in his magic. It didn't work.
"Still stuck on just one spell a day I guess." He sighed and tried again. The burn out had lasted two weeks already and he was just starting to get his magic back. but he was beginning to get annoyed at having to use his mouth for everything, so now his stupid horn was going to do what he told it to. He scrunched up his face as his horn started to glow. The twig lifted of the ground and then, nothing. It slipped through his magic like a his aura was made of water. "No, come on stupid horn work!"
He closed his eyes and focused just like Mother had taught him to do. He took deep breaths in and out, and let the arcane energies of the universe move around him, through him. "Ow." He rubbed his eye where the stick had hit him, the offending twig falling to the ground. "I really need to learn to do that with my eyes open." He grabbed the twig in his hoof and started trying to detangle his rat's nest of a mane.
Escutcheon had gotten nearly half of his mane detangled when he saw the tree line. The sun was still close to the eastern horizon, if he was right Mother and Father were right over there and he'd soon be going home. He rushed through the thinning trees to the edge of the grove The twig forgotten in his half combed mane. "Mother, Father I'm sorry I-" He stopped. No pony was there. He looked north and south, left and right. Nopony. Nopony was here, he was still lost. He felt a familiar pressure in his sinuses as tears began to form behind his eyes. The Shadow of the grove stretched for nearly fifty meters into a vast, flat grassland, which seemed to stretch on to infinity. Only a few trees dotted the immense plain that stood before him. The golden beams of Celestia's sun cast its light on the emerald carpet before him. There were no more hills that Mother and Father were just over the other side there were no more groves that Mother and Father were just beyond. There was just grass and the western horizon.